World roundup: August 2-3 2025
Stories from Syria, China, Ivory Coast, and elsewhere
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TODAY IN HISTORY
August 2, 338 BCE (or thereabouts): Philip II of Macedon defeats a Greek army organized by the cities of Thebes and Athens at the Battle of Chaeronea. The outcome effectively ended any chance of Greek resistance to a Macedonian takeover. After harshly punishing Thebes, Philip engaged in heavy diplomacy to win over Athens and Corinth and isolate Sparta. He managed to unite most of the Greek city-states behind him in what historians call the “League of Corinth,” which was one of the key preliminary steps in his grand plan to invade the Persian Empire. Philip didn’t live long enough to lead that campaign, but his son Alexander picked up where dad left off.
August 2, 216 BCE (or thereabouts): At the Battle of Cannae in southeastern Italy, the Carthaginian general Hannibal annihilates a much larger Roman army in what has often been regarded as the closest thing to a total military victory in history. Hannibal’s cavalry outflanked and completely encircled the Roman infantry in a pincer movement, then attacked from all sides. Of the 86,000 or so Roman soldiers who began the battle (to about 50,000 for Hannibal), Livy says that the Carthaginians killed 67,500 and that’s the low estimate. Polybius cites a death toll of over 85,000.
August 2, 1964: The USS Maddox, in North Vietnamese territorial waters, exchanges fire with several North Vietnamese torpedo boats. The Gulf of Tonkin Incident, as it came to be known, along with a second alleged engagement two nights later that turned out to be fictional, kicked off the Vietnam War.
August 2, 1990: Iraq invades Kuwait, sparking a US military buildup that would eventually lead to the Gulf War and, as far as that conflict’s fans are concerned, nothing else whatsoever.
August 3, 1940: An Italian army crosses from Italian East Africa into British Somaliland, beginning an invasion that will end with Italy’s annexation of the colony on August 19. Britain organized a counterattack, Operation Appearance, which began on March 16, 1941, and ended with the British recapture of Somaliland on April 8. Following World War II, Britain assumed control over Italian East Africa, and eventually the former British and Italian Somalilands gained independence and merged into Somalia. Nowadays the territory of British Somaliland, under the name “Somaliland,” considers itself independent of Somalia, though that claim is not recognized internationally.
August 3, 1960: Having expressed its intention to leave the neocolonial “French Community” the previous month, the government of Niger gains full independence. Annually commemorated as Nigerien Independence Day.
INTERNATIONAL
A group of eight core OPEC+ member states—Algeria, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Oman, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE—met virtually on Sunday and agreed once again to increase global oil output, this time by another 547,000 barrels per day starting in September. That’s roughly the same as the group’s August increase. This group collectively imposed a voluntary production cut in late 2023 with the plan at the time to return to pre-cut production levels by September 2026. But this latest increase will undo the entire cut a full year ahead of schedule. Notably that large August production increase does not appear to have moved oil prices very much, so there’s not much reason to expect a major price drop when next month’s increase takes effect.
MIDDLE EAST
SYRIA
There were several small but potentially troubling incidents over the weekend from the standpoint of Syrian tranquility. Potentially most concerning is a report of new fighting between government security forces and Druze militias in southern Syria’s Suwayda province on Sunday that killed at least three of the former and one of the latter. Heavy fighting in that province last month that left over 1400 people dead gave way to a tentative calm that has in turn segued into what the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and residents of the province are calling a “siege” wherein security forces and allied “armed groups” have cut off the highway between Suwayda city and Damascus in an attempt to “force inhabitants to comply.” The Syrian government is blaming the highway closure on Druze militants. Complicating the situation, the Israeli military (IDF) says its forces conducted a “raid” in southern Syria over the weekend targeting alleged arms trafficking.
Elsewhere, the Syrian government and the Syrian Democratic Forces group are accusing one another of instigating an exchange of artillery and rocket fire near the northern city of Manbij on Saturday that left at least four soldiers and three civilians wounded. The SDF and the government are still struggling to agree on a way to implement a deal they reached in March on integrating the former into the latter. And the SDF reported on Sunday that a group of Islamic State fighters had attacked one of its checkpoints in eastern Syria’s Deir Ezzor province on Thursday, killing five of its personnel.
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
The IDF killed at least 33 aid seekers in Gaza on Sunday, one day after it killed at least 38 under similar circumstances and at least 62 overall. Most of these killings appear to have taken place near “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” distribution sites, though as ever the GHF insists that those accounts are fictitious.
The headline on Sunday involved Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir visiting the Haram al-Sharif (or Temple Mount if you prefer) site in east Jerusalem, ostensibly to “pray.” We can assume that his real purpose was to provoke a response from Palestinians that might further complicate efforts to negotiate a Gaza ceasefire. That process is already falling apart, though US envoy Steve Witkoff told the families of Israelis still being held captive in Gaza on Saturday that “we are very, very close to a solution to end this war [his term, not mine]” and in particular that “Hamas has said that they are prepared to be demilitarized” which if true would indeed be a significant development. Hamas has denied Witkoff’s claim and insists it will only disarm once Palestinians’ “full national rights are restored, foremost among them the establishment of a fully sovereign, independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.”
Witkoff’s comments about Hamas aside, Ben-Gvir was likely reacting to reports that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is now open to what the US envoy has called an “all or nothing” deal rather than the piecemeal, staged proposals that have been on the table so far. This would see all of the remaining Gaza captives released and a full, indefinite cessation of the IDF’s genocidal campaign. The parties are still very far apart in terms of the details and part of this offer appears to be a threat of intensified IDF operations focused on recovering those captives (though the IDF has been trying to free the captives by force since October 2023 with little success) in the event that negotiations go nowhere.
Netanyahu’s willingness to consider a deal under which he would not easily be able to resume the genocide after a brief pause is notable. He may be feeling public pressure to free the captives, particularly after Hamas released a video showing that at least one of them, Evyatar David, is—like everyone else in Gaza—starving. Following the release of that video, Netanyahu called on the International Committee of the Red Cross to ensure the provision of humanitarian aid to the captives, but Hamas countered that it will only cooperate with the ICRC if all of Gaza’s humanitarian needs are addressed.
IRAQ
Jacobin’s Jaclynn Ashly reports on Yazidis who are still sheltering on Mount Sinjar, where they fled during Islamic State’s attempted genocide in 2014, out of concern that they may yet be at risk:
Over a decade after ISIS’s genocidal assault, a fragile calm has returned to Mount Sinjar, interrupted occasionally by Turkish drone strikes targeting Yazidi militias aligned with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a Kurdish militant group that has waged a decades-long insurgency against Turkey. However, following PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan’s recent call for disarmament, such strikes have grown less frequent.
Threaded between military posts, checkpoints, and tunnel entrances etched into the mountainside, rows of makeshift tents stretch along Mount Sinjar’s northern edge. Hundreds of Yazidi families remain here, unwilling to return to villages below where the past feels perilously close.
Most have stayed on the mountain since ISIS’s initial onslaught; others returned after years in internally displaced persons (IDP) camps in the Kurdistan region, where over two hundred thousand Yazidis still live. All are drawn to the mountain as their last true protector against a genocide they fear may yet return.
ASIA
INDIA
Indian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal told reporters on Friday that New Delhi has no intention of reassessing its relationship with Russia or its purchase of Russian oil. He was responding to Donald Trump’s imposition of a 25 percent tariff on Indian products and an as-yet unspecified “penalty” over its Russian energy and arms purchases. Historically India met most of its oil needs via imports from the Middle East, but with Russia scrambling for buyers amid Western sanctions following its 2022 invasion of Ukraine it lowered prices and pushed heavily to reorient its exports toward China and India. Apparently the lower price is too good for New Delhi to pass up.
MYANMAR
A military airstrike on the rebel-held town of Mogok in Myanmar’s Mandalay region killed at least 13 people on Saturday. Mogok is a hub for Myanmar’s trade in gems, particularly rubies. It was seized by the Ta’ang National Liberation Army a bit over a year ago. The TNLA reported the death toll and said that at least 14 people were wounded.
CHINA
Like its Indian counterpart, the Chinese government is disinclined to rethink its purchases of Russian and Iranian oil simply because they irritate the United States. This was apparently one of the issues on which US and Chinese negotiators found very little common ground during this past week’s trade talks in Stockholm and may be a sticking point in further discussions over lowering mutual tariff rates or, at least, maintaining the current interim rates beyond their August 12 expiration. Donald Trump has threatened to impose 100 percent “secondary tariffs” on countries that continue buying Russian oil in particular, as part of the penalties he’s promised to impose on Moscow in the next few days absent any progress on a Ukraine peace deal. It doesn’t seem like either China or India has been particularly moved by that threat.
AFRICA
IVORY COAST
World Politics Review’s Lesley Anne Warner provides the context for Ivorian President Alassane Ouattara’s controversial decision to seek a fourth term in office:
After months of playing coy, President Alassane Ouattara of Cote d’Ivoire announced earlier this week that he will run for a controversial fourth term in the country’s presidential election in October. In preparing the ground for his announcement, Ouattara has made Cote d’Ivoire’s economic performance central to his electoral strategy. Since he first came to power following the 2010-2011 post-election crisis that claimed over 3,000 lives, Cote d’Ivoire has experienced a remarkable economic recovery. With its real GDP growth for this year projected to reach 6.3 percent, it is now among Africa’s fastest-growing economies.
Ouattara has used his economic stewardship to portray himself more broadly as the guarantor of prosperity amid regional chaos. Cote d’Ivoire is on the front lines of a deepening divide in West Africa between the Alliance of Sahel States, or AES, and the remaining members of the Economic Community of West African States, or ECOWAS, from which the junta-led AES governments withdrew in January. With jihadist violence in the Sahel continuing to worsen, Cote d’Ivoire is managing the drawdown of French troops from its territory while entertaining U.S. interest in establishing a drone base in the northern part of the country.
As the military juntas in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger consolidate power, deepening a crisis of legitimacy for democracies in the region and beyond, the stakes of Cote d’Ivoire’s elections extend far beyond its borders.
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SOMALIA
The African Union’s Somali peacekeeping mission attacked the town of Bariire in southern Somalia’s Lower Shabelle region on Friday, attempting to recover it after al-Shabab fighters seized it back in March. As of Sunday, AFP reported that the battle was continuing with each side claiming to have inflicted substantial casualties on the other but no confirmation of those claims.
EUROPE
RUSSIA
A Ukrainian drone strike set fire to a Russian oil refinery in the resort town of Sochi on Sunday. There’s no indication of casualties or significant damage but the strike does appear to confirm that the Ukrainian military is once again prioritizing Russian energy facilities. The previous day it struck the Ryazan oil refinery, likewise sparking a fire. Ukrainian officials have been threatening to ramp up their strikes on Russia in response to recent escalations in Russian bombardments of Ukrainian cities.
UKRAINE
Ukraine’s newly re-empowered anticorruption agencies, the National Anticorruption Bureau and the Specialized Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office, have reportedly “uncovered a major graft scheme that procured military drones and signal jamming systems at inflated prices.” The case involves “a sitting lawmaker, two local officials and an unspecified number of National Guard personnel” who conspired with suppliers to pay “deliberately inflated prices” for their products, with the officials receiving kickbacks of as much as 30 percent of an overpriced contract. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who just tried to defang both agencies only to back down in the face of public opposition, insisted via social media on Saturday that “there can only be zero tolerance for corruption.”
AMERICAS
UNITED STATES
Finally, with the US Army reportedly planning to “consolidate” a number of IT contracts into one whopping $10 billion package for Palantir, Wired reports on the ways the firm is “extending its reach” into the federal government:
President Donald Trump’s administration has dramatically expanded its work with Palantir, elevating the company cofounded by Trump ally Peter Thiel as the government’s go-to software developer. Following massive contract terminations for consulting giants and government contractors like Accenture, Booz Allen, and Deloitte, Palantir has emerged ahead. Now the data analytics firm is partnering with those companies—offering them a lifeline while consolidating its own power.
Palantir has become one of the few winners in the Trump administration’s cost-cutting efforts, receiving more than $113 million in federal spending since the beginning of the year, according to The New York Times. Palantir’s US government revenue has grown by more than $370 million compared to this time last year, according to the company’s most recent quarterly earnings report. Before making remarks at last week’s AI Summit in DC, Trump thanked a variety of cabinet secretaries and tech leaders, including Palantir chief technology officer Shyam Sankar. “We buy a lot of things from Palantir,” Trump said. “Are we paying our bills? I think so.”
Instead of replacing these more traditional contractors, Palantir’s software is becoming the core tool deployed by them in government systems, placing Palantir in a newly central role.